Democrats are certainly trying to accomplish this by dominating the media and education establishments and using them to indoctrinate rather than to teach and inform, by implementing immigration policy that favors people they believe will support them, by using the power of government to silence opponents through the tacitly unfair “fairness” doctrine, etc… and they will certainly try to jury rig congressional districts in their favor.

Amazingly ignorant comment considering these are all tactics that have been more abused during the Bush administration than any other administration in my lifetime. Bush loosened up regulations on the media to allow explicitly conservative news networks to takeover and consume smaller, more liberal news agencies, effectively silencing them or turning them conservative. That bought Bush about 6 years of spin with the media. Public schools have been regressively starved of their budgets, meaning schools with more low income students have been cut back to substandard operating costs. Meanwhile, Republicans are pushing for their lives to bring mandatory prayer to public school and winning. If that’s not indoctrination, what is? Bush has been notoriously ineffective on immigrations, because he’s been openly pressured by southern constituents who explicitly benefit from illegal immigrant laborers. Sure, blame it on the liberals again. And the Bush administration under the Republican congress and now under the new fangled conservative supreme court bias, was and is completely transparent about changing and altering laws and definitions to justify their actions and silence their opponents. Lastly, Republicans not only tried, but did jury rig congressional districts in their favor, rampantly, by redrawing congressional districts with more delegate counts to include areas that contain more Republican voters.

I can’t believe you’re so uninformed. After eight years of an administration that pillages the American people, you’re still blaming everything on the Democrats.

Regards,
Peter H.

If your description of the bill is adequate, that still makes Houndentenor’s contention (in comment #1) that it mandated anti-gay discrimination incorrect. It merely prevented gays from bringing such claims.

Even under Amendment #2, companies could treat gay people fairly. Which they can still do even without ENDA.

Thanks for the clarification.

They all have a lot of reasons to vote Republican. Taxes alone are a reason. My twin sons, Taylor and Tyler, feel strongly about abolishing the death tax. A number of their buddies will soon be getting their trust funds and want no increase in capital gains taxes.

But not one of these young men has any interest in McCain.

If politics comes up when they’re in my house there is a common concern about McCain. The next president is pretty much assured of at least one Supreme Court vacancy and could have two more. McCain has promised to nominate justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia. That scares me, and I’m straight, so I can appreciate why it’s an important issue with my sons and their friends.

Only one of these young men is even leaning toward Obama and all joke that they wish our state had a “None of the Above” box on the ballot.

Regards,
Peter H.

Your memory’s a little rusty, GPW.

Colorado’s notorious Amendment 2 didn’t void any anti-discrimination laws, at least not directly. It simply changed the terms of their enforcement, creating a separate and unequal legal status for gay, lesbian and bisexual persons. Under Amendment 2, heterosexuals could still press claims of sexual orientation discrimination in court. Gay, lesbian and bisexual people could not.

Had the amendment voided local non-discrimination ordinances outright, it might have withstood a constitutional challenge.

The critical issues facing America ARE NOT “gay marriage”, nor even the next SCOTUS nominations

I agree about gay marriage, but disagree strongly about the SCOTUS. There is nothing else a president does that affects Americans and America more directly and longer than who he appoints to the courts.

When I say America is a center-right country, that doesn’t mean they always vote center-right, otherwise Democrats would never control congress or the White House. What it means is that American values are center-right. We believe in our founding principles, the Constitution, limited government, personal liberty, rugged individualism, the rule of law, and capitalism for example. Values that are at odds with the left wing view of America.

Now, its possible America could go from being a more or less conservative nation over time to a liberal nation. Democrats are certainly trying to accomplish this by dominating the media and education establishments and using them to indoctrinate rather than to teach and inform, by implementing immigration policy that favors people they believe will support them, by using the power of government to silence opponents through the tacitly unfair “fairness” doctrine, etc… and they will certainly try to jury rig congressional districts in their favor. But for the time being Americans still believe in the founding principles and don’t want a European-like socialist government legislating, regulating, taxing and controlling every aspect of their lives.

The only times Democrats are able to hold onto power is when they rule from the center. But that Democratic party is gone. Conservative Democrats are virtually an extinct species: people like Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman (who is only conservative on one issue) have been run out of the party. It is now controlled overwhelmingly by mcgovernite socialists and marxists like Nancy Pelosi and your presumptive nominee Barack Obama.

They will only be able to fool Americans with their rhetoric for so long. Eventually Democrats will start implementing policy. And when they hike taxes “on the rich”, implement “windfall profit taxes”, drastically increase regulation on American businesses, drastically increase the size, power and cost of government …all of which they have promised to do, and when energy prices skyrocket (even more), more industries leave America, others fail, jobs decline, poverty increases, crime increases, and taxes increase on all Americans … as are the inevitable results of liberal policy, the drift leftward will end as quickly as it did when the exact same sorts of Democrats controlled the White house and congress in the Carter administration.

And historically, no, Republicans do NOT turn out and vote for the candidate no matter who it is. Bill Clinton never even got 50% of the vote. He never won either of his elections so much as Republicans lost because the base did not turn out and vote for GHWB’s second term or for Bob Dole.

Unfortunately, Democrats can inflict a great deal of very long lasting damage on America in even just 2 years, let alone four.

The critical issues facing America ARE NOT “gay marriage”, nor even the next SCOTUS nominations, they’re economic and security issues. Do you really want the Dhimmicrats running the White House AND the Congress? Do you want another generation of apologists and appeasers confronting (HA!) overseas terrorism, Iranand Islamofascism, and our dangerous overseas dependence on basic commodities like oil? Do you really want the NEA and the Nanny-state it-takes-a-village leftist bureaucrats raising your kids? The unions crippling your business, or the taxes you pay skyrocketting to pay the entitlements promised by Obama, both Clintons, and Nancy Pelosi?

Those are reasons many gay/lesbian voters will be voting for McCain in 2008, not gay marriage nor DADT.

Republicans need to be aware of the importance of this election in terms of their political future. Yes, American has been a center of the right country over the past decades but that doesn’t mean it will always be that way. A large generation of voters, my generation, is entering into this election and becoming more important in terms of votes. If Obama and a Democrat Congress, which will most likely expand its majorities, is given the chance to handle these problems and does it well. They will set off a reallignment that will shift the country to the left, just like Regean was able to do for the right.

ND30–No if you read correctly that is not what I said at all and saying “no, no twice doesn’t change the fact that you are either deliberately misreading what I said or simply mistaken.

In fact I agreed with GPW that the absence of anti-discrimination laws does not mandate discrimination, but I disagreed with his rather dismissive characterization of this as having “merely voided local non-discrimination laws”. Technically GPW is correct that it voids “local” anti-discrimination laws, but there are no federal laws that protect discrimination on sexual orientation. What this means in practice, and in law, is that gays and lesbian can be openly and blatantly discriminated against in housing, employment, etc, without having any legal remedy. If folks want to argue they support such actions on the grounds that “freedom of association” should trump these protections that is all well and good, but be honest about what you are saying and own up to it.

As for gay attitudes toward straight people in the Castro, I am not questioning your anecdotes, but to use the Castro to characterize the situation of most lesbians and gays in the country is hardly the most convincing argument in the world. Furthermore, if there is such discrimination occurs and the California statute prohibits discrimination on “sexual orientation” the straight folks you are concerned have a cause of action.

McCain has been patted on the head by the MSM for so long every time he crosses conservatives that I think he has developed Pavlovian instincts; he has learned that reward comes from screwing the base and pandering to the middle and left. But America is a right of center country. Moving right is what Democrats have to do to win. McCain will learn the hard way this November that moving left is how Republicans lose.

No, no, Brendan; you stated that the mere absence of legal remedy constituted blatant discrimination. Therefore, since straight people have no legal remedy, THEY are being discriminated against.

Additionally, I’ve heard straight people mocked as “breeders” and seen them be given bad treatment by gay business owners and store attendants. Indeed, gay groups here in the Castro regularly rail against the heterosexuals who are moving in and “ruining the neighborhood”.

Gay and lesbian people like Bonnie Bleskachek who blatantly sexually harass other employees have screamed that investigation of their behavior and punishment of it is “homophobia and sexism”. THAT is the mentality from which you are coming — the one in which your sexual orientation is an automatic free pass to allow you to do things that other employees would never be allowed to do.